Jamie LendinoPlantronics Voyager Pro HDWith its integrated proximity sensor, the comfortable, great-sounding Plantronics Voyager Pro HD lets you switch calls between handset and headset simply by placing it on your ear. Only if it weren't so big.

Still larger than what most people want to wear, at least in public. Vocalyst service costs extra after the first year.

Bottom Line

With its integrated proximity sensor, the comfortable, great-sounding Plantronics Voyager Pro HD lets you switch calls between handset and headset simply by placing it on your ear. Only if it weren't so big.

Plantronics has a good thing going with its Voyager Pro line of Bluetooth Headsets. We've praised the original version, the improved Voyager Pro+, which added A2DP streaming and the company's Vocalyst voice-to-text service, and the Voyager Pro UC, which added a proximity sensor. The latest model, the Voyager Pro HD, brings all of this together, but at the original Voyager Pro's price of just $99. It's a stellar value and sounds great on voice calls.

//Compare Similar Products

Design, Features, and Call QualityThe headset itself is still large, although Plantronics has been subtly refining the design over the years. This is purely an over-the-ear headset. The latest version is slightly shorter and stubbier, although the boom mic is about as long as before. Plantronics packs two extra ear tips in the box, along with two felt covers you can use if you want, either way, you're bound to find one that's comfortable. The long boom positions the mic much closer to your mouth than with smaller headsets, which improves sound quality. During testing, I found the Pro HD supremely comfortable to wear all day.

Pairing the Pro HD with another phone is simple: You hold the power button for several seconds, until it starts flashing in an alternating red and blue pattern. I had no problem pairing the Pro HD with an Apple iPhone 4 and a Samsung Infuse 4G.

The voice alert-based interface announces available talk time, volume, and connection status. If you have an iPhone or Android device, you'll see a little battery indicator on the home screen telling you how much charge is left in the headset. The Pro HD, by sensing whether or not it's placed on your ear, does a number of things. It switches an active call to the headset, and when you take it off, it switches it back to the phone. That's huge. It also knows to pause streaming audio from any of the above tasks if you remove it. Finally, it locks the call button, so you won't accidentally redial someone.

In a series of tests, the Pro HD excelled. Calls sounded crisp, clear, and warm in both directions; this is the kind of headset you can use all day, conduct important calls, and no one will ever know. There's no background hiss, I heard no untoward computerized-sounding artifacts, and there was plenty of gain available in case you're in a noisy environment. Speaking of which, noise cancellation performance still trails the Editors' Choice Aliph Jawbone Era ($129, 4 stars), but that's only in torture tests. In regular use, the Pro HD is good enough to mute the background noise of an office fan, or the breeze blowing by a car window at 40 mph.

Other Features and ConclusionsLike most Bluetooth headsets, the Voyager Pro HD supports A2DP, so you can listen to music (in mono), podcasts, audiobooks, voice prompts from your phone's GPS app, and other streaming audio. It also supports multipoint, so you can pair and use two devices simultaneously (in addition to up to eight in total); that lets you switch between Skype calls and regular phone calls, to cite just one example. Range was average; I could walk about 15 feet before static began to creep into the audio signal.

The Pro HD works with Vocalyst, Plantronics' text and voice service. You get a lengthy one-year free trial in the box, in the form of a 10-digit activation code; the service costs $24.99 per year after that. With Vocalyst, the Pro HD lets you record and listen to voice memos, send or listen to e-mail messages, and update your Facebook status. It also delivers news and weather reports. In practice, it's hit or miss in terms of voice recognition, so I wouldn't trust it for my own status updates, and many phones have voice memo apps built-in.

We couldn't test battery life because the proximity sensor was too, well, sensitive; it kept returning to standby mode, despite repeated attempts. Typically, Voyager Pros are good for at least five and a half hours, if not more.

Because of its size, comfort, and excellent performance, the Voyager Pro HD is the perfect headset for the home office or desk; use this indoors, use your car's hands-free Bluetooth (or separate speaker, such as the SuperTooth HD), and all your calls will be hands-free. The Aliph Jawbone Era ($129, 4.5 stars) just barely retains our Editors' Choice, thanks to its still-superior noise cancellation, equally good sound quality, much smaller size, and miniature app platform that adds features. But the Jawbone Era, while better than past Aliph designs, is still not as comfortable to ear for extended periods, and it doesn't do the Voyager Pro HD's nifty ear trick. It's also $30 more expensive, which is significant for a device that tends to get lost or damaged.

Finally, for more serious use in the enterprise, the Plantronics Savi 440 skips Bluetooth in favor of DECT 6.0, which vastly improves distance and (to a smaller extent) sound quality, although it's much more expensive. But as long as you don't need a tiny, near-invisible Bluetooth headset, you'll love the Voyager Pro HD.

Plantronics Voyager Pro HD

Bottom Line: With its integrated proximity sensor, the comfortable, great-sounding Plantronics Voyager Pro HD lets you switch calls between handset and headset simply by placing it on your ear. Only if it weren't so big.

Jamie Lendino is the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Prior to PCMag, he was a contributing editor for Laptop and mediabistro.com. His writing has also been published in Popular Science, Consumer Reports, Electronic Musician, and Sound and Vision, as well as...
More »